Eucalan Delicate Wash on Knitting Daily TV

This product is fabulous!!!  It is an all natural, no rinse, delicate wash with lanolin.
I personally like the Eucalyptus scent as it is a natural moth inhibitor.
The demonstration is about washing hand felted slippers.

Wish I Could Dye!!!

Applying the colour with a basting tool.

Here comes the fun!  My kitchen smelled of Koolaid!  I mixed up various flavours in pint jars and set them in the sink.  My kitchen smelled GREAT!

Rainbow Dying with Koolaid

 Here is the second dye bath with even more colours.  I was getting brave and even mixed Koolaid with food colouring drops in the water.  It looks like one of those Clown Wigs doesn't it?  The dye bath (with white vinegar added) needed to be put into a double boiler type affair.  I set the casserole dish onto canning jar rings in a big soup pot with enough hot water to reach half-way up the casserole dish.  Remember, the water had to be the same temperature as the dye bath so felting would not take place.  I got the pot boiling and then kept it simmering for a good 45 minutes.

Nothing to rinse out...all colour gone!

I could tell the dye had all been absorbed by the fleece because there was no colour left in the dye pot...all the colour had gone into the fleece.

Squeeze water out gently.

The fleece needed to be treated very gently so as not to get the fibres tangled and matted.  No felting yet.

As you can see here the colours become more subdued as the fleece dries on this wooden rack.  Oh what fun!!!  I can hardly wait to begin to make felt with my beautiful fleece.

Washing Greasy Fleece

This is the stuff that I skirted out...dirty eh?!?

 Getting that little bit of stuff out of the fleece took several minutes...but I read it had to be done before the fleece could hit the water or else it would get tangled and become matted.

Steaming hot water...160 F.

 I had to go down to the basement to adjust the temperature of the water heater and then wait for the water to get hot.  I had a thermometer to make sure.

Letting the fleece soak.

 Raw greasy fleece cannot be agitated...it takes a LOT of soap and VERY hot water.  It must just soak in the hot water for half an hour and then put into rinse water of the same temperature or else the felting process will begin.

It still looks dirty!!!

So....here is my washed fleece.  One would never know it had been washed except to see how dirty the water was.  Not to worry.  The dye bath will get the fleece cleaner....I hope!

The Journey Begins

A Big Bag of Dirty Fleece

I thought I would tell you about how I acquired all of this stuff...at least 10 pounds of fleece and fibre.  I subscribe to Freecycle and get notices in my e-mail box when someone has something to give away for free.  One day I saw a post from a young lady who was nearly begging people to come and take away this fleece.  Well...I hadn't done any spinning for years...and I thought to myself; "I just hate to think of all that fleece going to the dump."  So I grabbed some big green garbage bags, got my German Shepherd dog Sheppy, hopped in my van, and drove 60 miles down to get some free sheep fleece.

This needs to be skirted and washed

I went online and read all about how to clean greasy fleece.  I discovered it was no small job as the fleece needed to be skirted first....picked over and the vegetable matter and really dirty stuff taken off.  Professionals have a skirting table where most of the junk just falls through the holes.  I didn't have one of those so......

My Make-do Skirting Set-up.

I set up outside beside the creek in the shade on a beautiful sunny day and began to skirt the fleece.